Dehydrating Apples

I harvested my Williams' Pride apple tree yesterday.  It's an early-maturing apple, but this is a bit earlier than early, so some of them were not quite ready.  As the link notes, Williams' Pride is an apple that matures slowly, so should be picked more than once.  I went ahead and pulled almost all of them (except for a couple) because 1) I knew I was going to dehydrate them, and 2) some of the apples were getting attacked by bugs and were getting watercore.  As the page above (and this one) note, Watercore is a problem of Williams' Pride, particularly if left on the tree to maturity.  Watercore does not necessarily ruin the fruit, but it also doesn't help it much.  So I harvested them. The picture at right shows watercore at the left side of the slice (the water on the plate ran off the slice itself; I had just pulled it out of the water bath described below). More (and more positive) information on watercore can be found here.


My harvest was modest--the tree is still relatively young, and I didn't really properly manage it this year.  I neglected all of my apples (I have three in production, with several more that haven't started fruiting yet).  Last year I got a mere two and a half pounds; this year I've pulled four pounds so far, but there is another pound on the tree and a number were ruined by disease or insects while on the tree.

My approach to dehydrating apples is pretty simple.  I'm all about making things easy.  I prepare a bowl with some citric acid and water to dunk the apples in after slicing (to limit browning), then use one of the radial-style apple slicers to core and slice the apples into eight wedges.  Some people spiral slice them using something like this, but that's slower and more of a hassle.  Then I just place them skin-down on the trays of my dehydrator (I have a nine-tray Excalibur; it can hold about 12 pounds [when cutting slices as described above, I have to pull out every other tray to allow room for the thicker pieces before they dry down and shrink]).  Currently, I'm setting the temp to 135, what they recommend for fruit, and drying them for two to three days.  I used to use a lower temperature, 125, to hopefully reduce vitamin loss, but that took forever.  I dry them until they are pretty firm so they won't spoil while in storage.  They may not snap when I'm done with them, but they are far from tender.  My big wedge-shaped slices are more of a mouthful than the ones you'd get with a cranked slicer, and require a lot of chewing. Nonetheless, I like them.  I actually like dried apples better than fresh ones.  This is how they look when dehydrated:

This is not the only thing I do with apples--I also make applesauce and apple pie filling (subjects for another day).